Blood and Water
by Sherry Marie
Summary: Gojyo reflects on his past and where he is going, and Hakkai takes his turn in part 2.
1. Blood and Water -- Gojyo

1 Blood and Water  
  
  
  
My life has always been lived in shades of red. I'm not just talking about the obvious things like my hair that hangs down my back in a thick mess of tangled crimson, or my eyes that are forever red; not bloodshot but like shots of blood pooled together to form droplets of shifting amber. And I'm not even talking about the angry red scratches inscribed deep across my cheek that somehow still manage, after all these years, to feel fresh and raw when my face stretches to smile. But as far back as I can remember, red is shade that has painted my past.  
  
My first memory is of red, of seeing the red puffy skin beneath my mother's eyes and the rawness under her nose as she looked at me, at my unwanted small life, a life that she was left to care for, a life that she wanted least of all. I learned early that red was the color of grief and despair.  
  
The blanket that covered the bed that I shared with my brother was quilted with large patches of red dominating the worn pattern. That bed smelled like Jien and I, but mostly of Jien, or perhaps that's just wistfulness painting my memory. We use to lie there and Jien would tell me stories on the nights when I had trouble sleeping. I loved the low whisper-rough tones of his voice as he told me things, many things that were not really true about knights, and princesses, and far off places that I should not have believed, but I believed them anyway, because I believed so strongly in my brother. I usually kept quiet while he talked and it was fine that way, because we both knew that it was always best for me to be small and quiet and unnoticed.  
  
We use to have to lay close together in that bed so that the blanket covered both of us during the night even as we moved and shifted with the dream cycle. I never minded because I loved the warmth of being pressed against my brother's body and the feel of his arm draped across my shoulders that anchored me to him.  
  
When I was alone in the bed the blanket seemed much bigger. It was at these times when I used it to cover my entire body and lay quite still, when I could hear the anguished voice of my mother and the desperately hushed voice of Jien as he tried to reason with her who was always beyond reason whenever she looked at me. I would hide beneath the blanket, but my eyes were always open peering through the threadbare fabric at the shapes of my family stained red through the shield of my blanket. I understood that desperation was swathed in crimson.  
  
I was lying on the floor, in the corner, and she was above me. Her body seemed so large and mine was still quite small. Her face was streaked with tears and split with pain while mine was open and calm and just waiting, waiting, waiting for her tears to finally stop. For my one chance, finally, to make my mother happy. It would come any second, the fall of that sharp blade in her hands, and I welcomed it. I welcomed the ending to her misery, to all of our misery, really. Just another moment and my mother would finally set right the wrong that my father had done, the sin that he should never have committed because it was so wrong, because nothing that was right in this world should have been able to bring that much grief to a mother.  
  
And then I saw the color red in its richest deepest truest shade as the red red blood poured from her chest flowing around the tip of the scarlet- stained sword down down covering me like too-thick drops of crimson summer rain.  
  
Though my life would continue to be tinted with shades of red, I knew then all red to be the color of my mother's blood.  
  
I don't remember the sword being pulled from her or her body crumpling to the ground before me. But I remember hearing tears when I had been so sure only moments before that the tears in that house were finally going to end. I looked at Jien; I looked at salty tracks flowing so freely down his face as he looked not at the mother he had just murdered, but at me.  
  
I remember being afraid for the first time that day, because it seemed as if this person with the tears running down his face was someone I didn't know. Because Jien, my brother, had never once cried while looking at me, and now that he was I was terrified and confused, and had no idea what to do now that I had made him cry, too.  
  
The tear-streaked face then turned from me. He walked across the room to the door. It opened, hinges squeaking as they had always done, and walked out without ever looking back. It was dusk then, and I watched the shape of his body walking towards the setting sun. For years I believed, just a little, that he was heading towards the sun to live there in its warmth away from this cold world that allowed sons to pierce the hearts of their mothers.  
  
I have never forgotten that sunset; the rich red hues that seemed to reach out and swallow my brother, and I knew then that red was the color of loneliness.  
  
My life after that was lived as if I was forever wearing a pair of cheap rose-colored sunglasses. It was seeing things, places, and people; always with a red tint that made everything sharper, so sharp that nothing could possibly be real.  
  
And it was so much better this way, this falseness that permeated everything around me, because a pretend life was so much safer than reality. A pretend life allowed you to live how you wanted, with any past that you wanted, or no past if that was easier. It was so much more pleasant than reality, because reality reached out with angry trembling hands to leave deep painful scratches across your face.  
  
There was such a deep pool of red around him when I saw him laying in the rain that I was already certain he was dead even before I nudged him with my foot. But that pitiful wet choking cough corrected my assumption leading me to lean down over his crumpled form.  
  
It felt like….  
  
He looked at me and smiled.  
  
And in his eyes there was nothing. It was as if everything that he was was pouring out from his shredded middle and mixing with the rich muddy earth at my feet. There was no joy, or pain, or passion, or grief.  
  
There was no red.  
  
And I saw the distinct green of his eye, so clearly, just as clearly as every tint and shade and variation of red that has ever passed before my own cursed scarlet eyes. And then it was gone.  
  
I took him home with me and patched him up. I looked out for him and gave him a place to live for over a month with no questions asked. I talked to him as often as he was up to it, and I controlled my temper when he had the indecency to beat me at cards in my own home. I fought with some worldly monk over him.  
  
I lost him.  
  
I got him back under a new name, one that seemed to suit him so much better.  
  
I offered him a place to live indefinitely. I left on a journey to save the world, not because I was asked or because it was the right thing to do, but because he was going. I fight by his side, at his back, and trust him to do the same for me. I try to make sure that he doesn't push himself too far.  
  
I know his past, what he has done, what he has been through. And I also know that he doesn't cry when the tragedy of his life practically screams for it. He puts on this fake smile and goes through life like a hollow puppet with invisible strings.  
  
He doesn't cry.  
  
I want him to cry.  
  
Until he does, he is living like I was with my figurative red glasses. And at one time I may have even understood, which I actually do, the need to be taken out of this world and all of its too harsh pain where mothers hate and brothers leave.  
  
But…  
  
I saw the green of his eye that night, and it was the most beautiful color that I had ever looked upon.  
  
I want to see it again. I want to look at life and see other colors besides red, the color of my mother's blood. And he needs to live again, to allow himself to feel pain, because without pain there is no happiness or love.  
  
I need to see if the water of his tears is enough to dilute the stain of red marking me in order to allow other colors of life to bleed through. 


	2. Blood and Water -- Hakkai

***I'm an absolute sucker for any type of requests. Here ya go, Kat! ^_^***  
  
**Extra special thanks to Chou for helping me with Hakkai's past, and to May for pointing out my typos!**  
  
Blood and Water II  
  
  
  
The first vivid memory that I hold is of myself crying. Details, settings, other impressions of that moment are vague at best, although I'm sure it occurred near the time when I had first entered the orphanage. I couldn't even name what exactly caused the tears to streak my face with their bitter warmth, but the tears themselves I remember with aching clarity, and I sometimes imagine even now if I were to stretch out my tongue just a little from the corner of my upturned mouth, salty moisture would reach out and touch the tip. And sometimes, mostly when my jaw half-aches from holding a smile too long, I feel a phantom pain behind the white and black and green of my eyes.  
  
My next memory is of when I stopped crying. Listening to the sounds of my own sobbing as it filled the room, stretching out around me, as far as it could go, until its echo sat deep deep in the dusty corner. The sound sat in the corner because it had nowhere else to go, there were no ears to capture the choking coughs of my tears, because people preferred to let you cry alone, people preferred not to be around so much pain as it only served as a reminder of their own pain and past and unshed tears.  
  
It was my loneliness that pulled the tears back into my body with a vicious grab, and I'll always remember, even when I have forgotten everything else in my life, the horrendous pain of that moment, because nothing hurts more than a tear that is denied its fall.  
  
After my face was dry and smooth, people were no longer afraid to be near me. I remember thinking that this was so much better than crying out to a dusty corner, and it was then that I doned my first mask, a mask of indifference. And people felt safe around me then, comfortable with my expressionless face that showed neither joy nor sorrow, an inivitaion, really, for others to draw whichever conclusions of my mood that they desired.  
  
I was alone, but not, and that seemed good enough at the time.  
  
But one day someone saw me, saw past the unassuming counterance that I wore on my face, somehow saw the unshed tears that still lived locked inside me like prisoners pacing in a cell hidden far away from the kiss of freedom. Saw me, and didn't turn away.  
  
"Are you all right?"  
  
I looked up and saw the forest of my own eyes, but lit honestly with life and concern. The fact that the concern was for me was the most startling thing of all. But reflexes, being what they were, formed my response.  
  
I told her I was fine. I looked into the first eyes that saw me, really saw me, and lied my signature lie.  
  
She didn't believe me, and I knew this as hurt intruded onto the perfect lines of her young face. I couldn't stand that she was hurt, I couldn't bear that I had hurt her, this stranger that had only ever spoken four words to me. I felt my blankness slip and I could not stop it, my unvarying mask was sliding from my face and all I could do was drop my eyes in shame for hurting this girl who I did not know, but who seemed to know me so well.  
  
I felt the tender touch of her hand on the top of my head and I forgot how to breathe, because that was the first time that I could ever remember being touched like that, being touched with meaning and on purpose. Her soft hand smoothed down and around the curve of my face until her fingers rested underneath my chin and lifted, very kindly with gentle insistence, until I found myself meeting the mirror green in her eyes. She held out her hand while the blush of her lips curved into a smile, a real smile, one rich with honesty and beauty, and I took her hand because she had offered it, and no one had ever really offered me anything before.  
  
It was the first time that I had ever tasted life without loneliness. The memories of the time I spent with Kannan, the unfairly short but incredibly cherished time we had together, are memories so precious that they are tied tight and kept away, securely and with great care as one keeps valuable treasures, kept somewhere in me near the hidden place of my captive tears.  
  
My tears remained absent during that time, even though I had no reason to upkeep deception, even though Kannan wanted to see me cry, at least once, for the final proof that I had found all that I needed with her. But she never asked, because it was not her way, and I never offered, telling myself that now I refrained from crying simply because this woman had found me. She had looked at me and replaced mimicked emotions with real ones, giving me my first smiles, but never a reason to cry.  
  
They took her way. They took my Kannan away from me when they had no right to do so, they took her away to save themselves, they took her away.  
  
I was playing with my students smiling the smiles that she had given to me, and they were hurting her.  
  
I was laughing while she was screaming.  
  
I was not there when she needed me, I was not there to give her protection, the only thing that she had ever needed from me, when she had always given me so much, she had given me everything that I was, and I was not there to give her that one thing.  
  
And then my memory stalls, growing so dim that it can barely be seen, but I remember this next thing clearly.  
  
I remember my hand reaching out with a sharp sharp knife slashing through an exposed shocked throat. I remember feeling warm liquid pouring over me. I remember how good it felt, this running slick wet heat that was coating my hand, and it was so close to feeling like what I remembered tears to feel like, that I went on and on, reaching out again and again to slice into that fluid, wanting to drown in it, because they had taken Kannan away, they had taken her and I had done nothing to stop them, and there wasn't anything in my life that had ever screamed more loudly for tears than that, and if I couldn't make them myself, I would keep reaching out with my knife until I was soaked.  
  
She was sitting in that cell when I found her, her voice calling out to me, pulling me from that dim place where I was trying so hard to drown. I did not really expect to see her there. I had thought that she was already dead. I did not think it was possible that I could have been living as I had been in the warm wet state of nothing while my Kannan still lived in this world.  
  
But she was there, and she called out to me. She was there, and I knelt down before her on the other side of the cold metal bars of her cell. She was there, and she stepped away from me pulling the sharp knife from my belt.  
  
I wish I knew for certain that I had cried for her at that moment, finally showing the tears that she had silently asked for. I had failed her in all things, but I wish I could remember if I was at least able to give her that.  
  
But no matter how hard I try and remember, my memory won't tell me if it was blood or tears that I felt running down my face, because Kannan had pulled my knife across her lovely throat during a time when I could not distinguish blood from water.  
  
She was gone, and nothing really mattered any more. She was gone, and the youkai had me, cutting into my body, dripping his blood on me in a taunt. She was gone, and I changed, shifted, became something else, and reached out not with the knife that had slit her throat, but with claws that tore and slashed and killed.  
  
I left that place, I left Kannan lying there, I left. I did not know where I was going; because Kannan was dead, and there was no place worth going to in a world that she was not in.  
  
My hand went to my belly and felt the warm liquid pouring out, and I thought finally, this must be the tears that I had locked away, the tears that I had halted from leaking from my eyes, so here they were, escaping through my belly.  
  
I fell.  
  
Something, I don't remember what, made me look up and see him. I saw, for the first time since Kannan was taken, a color break through the dimness. It was red; a beautiful red that touched the wet clumps of his hanging hair and sat in the scarlet of his eyes as he looked at me. It was red, and red was the color of blood.  
  
I knew then what I had been drowning in, and that knowledge pulled me the rest of the way from my dimness and I was glad. I understood that my body had been soaked in blood, as rich in color as this man's hair and eyes. I understood myself to be a murderer, a bather in blood, and I knew then that I was going to hell. There was nowhere for me to go in this world now that Kannan was gone, but this man, who was the color of blood, had shown me that there was still one place left for me to go.  
  
I smiled, my last real smile, and closed my eyes to wait.  
  
When I woke up I was not in hell. I was dry and warm, and the man with the blood-colored eyes and hair was with me. He had not known that there was no place left for me to go in a world without Kannan. Or perhaps he did know, and that was why he decided to take me to his home, so I would have a place to go in this world after all.  
  
I stayed with him, just the two of us, for over a month. I think that I would have enjoyed his company during that time if I were anything other than what I was, if I wasn't one of the walking dead. My life had ended with that knife splitting Kannan's throat. I knew this, but the man, Gojyo, did not. I thought that I should tell him, but I was grateful for what he tried to do. Pulling someone from a bloody puddle and taking them to your home to get better was a very selfless thing to do, and I did not want to cheapen his kindness by letting him know that his effort was wasted on a man that had died before he had been found.  
  
I had one more thing left to do, and then I would let my body die along with my soul. But in the end, I was denied even that.  
  
I was brought to the temple to answer for my sins, but my sentence had already been executed before I stepped through the entrance. They were gods, so of course they could see a dead man walking.  
  
I was not handed death in that temple, but instead, I was handed a new life, a new life that I had not asked for, but had been given anyway.  
  
I left a short while later with my new life and new name. For a moment, standing outside those gates, I had no idea where I was going to go. So I went to Gojyo's home, the only place in the world that I could understand how to get to.  
  
Since then, I have left that home to go on a journey, but he left with me.  
  
Each day I am learning more and more how to be Cho Hakkai, the person I am now that Cho Gounou is dead. And although I do not know everything, I know that I belong to Gojyo, because I only know that there are places in this world for me to go, as long as I know that he will come with me.  
  
And he wants things from me, many things that are reflected, unspoken, deep within the scarlet of his eyes. Things that I want to be able to give to him, but I don't know if I can, because I don't know if the things that he wants are things that I have left to give.  
  
But if I do, then I will find a way to give them all to him, everything that he needs, and they will be given within the drop of a tear. 


End file.
